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RUSKIN AS MASTER 
OF PROSE 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON 




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Nefo gork 
MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND LONDON 

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All rights reserved 






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Copyright, 1895, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



Nortoooti Hmss 

J. S. Cushing & Co- — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 









RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 



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RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 1 

Is it indeed beyond hope that our generation should at 
last do entire justice to our brightest living genius, the 
most inspiring soul still extant amongst us, whilst he may 
yet be seen and heard in the flesh ? 

The world has long been of one mind as to the great 
charm in the writings of John Ruskin ; it feels his subtle 
insight into all forms of beauty ; and it has made familiar 
truisms of his central lessons in Art. But it has hardly 
yet understood that he stands forth now, alone and inimit- 
able, as a supreme master of our English tongue ; that as 
preacher, prophet, (nay some amongst us do not hesitate 
to say as saint,) he has done more than as master of Art ; 
that his moral and social influence on our time, more than 
his aesthetic impulse, will be the chief memory for which 
our descendants will hold him in honour. 

Such genius, such zeal, such self-devotion should have 
imposed itself upon the age without a dissentient voice ; 
but the reputation of John Ruskin has been exposed to 
some singular difficulties. Above all, he is what the 
Italians call uomo antico\ a survival of a past age: he is 
a man of the Thirteenth Century pouring out sermons, 
denunciations, rhapsodies to the Nineteenth Century ; and 
if Saint Bernard himself in his garb of frieze and girdle of 
hemp were to preach amongst us in Hyde Park to-day, 
too many of us would listen awhile, and then straightway 
go about our business with a smile. But John Ruskin is 
1 N.l). Copyright also in England, /.<■. United Kingdom. 

B I 



2 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

not simply a man of the Thirteenth Century : he is a poet, 
a mystic, a missionary of the Thirteenth Century — such 
a poet as he was the young Dante in the days of his love 
and his chivalrous youth, and his Florentine rapture of all 
beautiful things, or as was the young Petrarch in the life- 
time of his Laura, or the young Francis beginning to 
dream of a regeneration of Christendom through the 
teaching of his barefoot Friars. 

Now John Ruskin not only is in his soul a Thirteenth- 
century poet and mystic : but, being this, he would literally 
have the Nineteenth Century go back to the Thirteenth : 
he means what he says : he acts on what he means. And 
he defies fact, the set of many ages, the actual generation 
around him, and still calls on them, alone and in spite of 
neglect and rebuffs, to go back to the Golden Ages of the 
Past. He would not reject this description of himself : 
he would proudly accept it. But this being so, it is inevit- 
able that much of his teaching — all the teaching for 
which he cares most in his heart — must be in our day 
the voice of one preaching in the wilderness. 

He claims to be not merely poet of the beautiful, but 
missionary of the truth ; not so much judge in Art as 
master in Philosophy. And as such he repudiates modern 
science, modern machinery, modern politics — in a sense 
modern civilisation as we know it and make it. Not 
merely is it his ideal to get rid of these ; but in his own 
way he sets himself manfully to extirpate these things in 
practice from the visible life of himself and of those who 
surround him. Such heroic impossibilities recoil on his 
own head; The Ninteenth Century has been too strong for 
him. Iron, steam, science, democracy — have thrust him 
aside, and have left him in his old age little but a soli- 
tary and most pathetic Prophet, such as a John the Baptist 
by Mantegna, unbending, undismayed, still crying out to a 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 3 

scanty band around him — ' Repent, for the kingdom of 
Heaven is at hand ' ! 

I am one who believes most devoutly in the need of 
repentance, and in the ultimate, if not early, advent of a 
kingdom of the Beautiful and the Good. But like the 
world around me, I hold by the Nineteenth Century and 
not by the Thirteenth : — or rather I trust that the Twen- 
tieth Century may have found some means of reconciling 
the ages of Steam and the ages of Faith, of combining the 
best of all ages in one. Unluckily, as do other prophets, 
as do most mystics, John Ruskin will have undivided alle- 
giance. With him, it is ever — all or none. Accept him 
and his lesson — wholly, absolutely, without murmur or 
doubt — or he will have none of your homage. And the 
consequence is that his devotees have been neither many, 
nor impressive. His genius, as most men admit, will 
carry him at times into fabulous extravagances, and his 
exquisite tenderness of soul will ofttimes seem to be but a 
second childhood in the eyes of the world. Thus it has 
come to pass that the grotesque side of this noble Evangel 
of his has been perpetually thrust into the forefront of the 
fight ; and those who have professed or expounded the 
Gospel of Ruskin have been for the most part such lads 
and lasses as the world in its grossness regards with impa- 
tience, and turns from with a smile. 

As one of the oldest and most fervent believers in his 
genius and the noble uses to which he has devoted it, I 
long to say a word or two in support of my belief : not 
that I have the shadow of a claim to speak as his disciple, 
to defend his utterances, or to represent his thoughts. In 
one sense, no doubt, I stand at an opposite pole of ideas, 
and in literal and direct words, I could hardly adopt any 
one of the leading doctrines of his creed. As to mine, he 
probably rejects everything I hold sacred and true with 



4 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

violent indignation and scorn. Morally, spiritually, as 
seen through a glass darkly, I believe that his teachers 
and my teachers are essentially one, and may yet be com- 
bined in the greater harmony that is to be. But to all 
this I should despair of inducing him to agree, or even 
to listen with patience. He regards me, I fear, as an 
utterly lost soul, destined to nothing but evil in this world 
and the next. And has he not, in private communication 
and in public excommunication, consigned me to outer 
darkness, and covered with indignant scorn every man 
and everything in which I have put my trust ?. 

The world has long been of one mind, I have said, as to 
the beauty of Ruskin's writing ; but I venture to think 
that even yet full justice has not been rendered to his con- 
summate mastery over our English tongue : that it has not 
been put high enough, and some of its unique qualities 
have not been perceived. Now I hold that fin certain 
qualities, in given ways, and in some rarer passages of 
his, Ruskin not only surpasses every contemporary writer 
of prose (which indeed is obvious enough), but he calls out 
of our glorious English tongue notes more strangely beau- 
tiful and inspiring than any ever yet issued from that 
instrument. No writer of prose before or since has ever 
rolled forth such mighty fantasias, or reached such pathetic 
melodies in words, or composed long books in one sus- 
tained strain of limpid grace./ 

It is indeed very far from a perfect style : much less is 
it in any sense a model style, or one to be cultivated, 
studied, or followed. If any young aspirant were to think 
it could be imitated, better were a millstone round his neck 
and he were cast into the sea. No man can bend the bow 
of Ulysses : and if he dared to take down from its long 
rest the terrible weapon, such an one might give himself 
an ugly wound. Ulysses himself has shot with it wildly, 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 5 

madly, with preposterous overflying of the mark, and blind 
aiming at the wrong target. Ruskin, be it said in sorrow, 
has too often played unseemly pranks on his great instru- 
ment : is too often ' in excess,' as the Ethics put it, indeed 
he is usually ' in excess ; ' he has used his mastery in mere 
exultation in his own mastery ; and as he now knows him- 
self (no man so well) out of wantonness — rarely, but very 
rarely, as in The Seven Lamps, in a spirit of display, or with 
reckless defiance of sense, good taste, reserve of strength — 
yet never with affectation, never as a tradesman, as a hack. 

We need not enter here on the interminable debate 
about what is called ' poetic prose/ whether poetic prose 
be a legitimate form of expressing ideas. A good deal of 
nonsense has been talked about it ; and the whole matter 
seems too much a dispute about terms. If prose be ornate 
with flowers of speech inappropriate to the idea expressed, 
or studiously affected, or obtrusively luscious — it is bad 
prose. If the language be proper to verse but improper 
to prose — it is bad prose. If the cadences begin to be 
obvious, if they tend to be actually scanned as verses, if 
the images are remote, lyrical, piled over one another, 
needlessly complicated, if the passage has to be read twice 
before we grasp its meanings — then it is bad prose. On 
the other hand, all ideas are capable of being expressed in 
prose, as well as in verse. They may be clothed with as 
much grace as is consistent with precision. If the sense 
be absolutely clear, the flow of words perfectly easy, the 
language in complete harmony with the thought, then no 
beauty in the phraseology can be misplaced — provided that 
this beauty is held in reserve, is to be unconsciously felt, 
not obviously thrust forward, and is always the beauty of 
prose, and not the beauty of verse. 

It cannot be denied that Ruskin, especially in his earlier 
works, is too often obtrusively luscious, that his images 



6 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

are often lyrical, set in too profuse and gorgeous a mosaic. 
Be it so. But/ne is always perfectly, transparently clear, 
absolutely free from affected euphuism, never laboriously 
'precious,' never grotesque, never eccentric. His beset- 
ting sins as a master of speech may be summed up in his 
passion for profuse imagery, and delight in an almost audi- 
ble melody of words. But how different is this from the 
laborious affectation of what is justly condemned as the 
'poetic prose ' of a writer who tries to be fine, seeking to 
perform feats of composition, who flogs himself into a 
bastard sort of poetry, not because he enjoys it, but to 
impose upon an ignorant reader ! This Ruskin never does. 
When he bursts the bounds of fine taste, and pelts us with 
perfumed flowers till we almost faint under their odour 
and their blaze of colour, it is because he is himself intoxi- 
cated with the joy of his blossoming thoughts, and would 
force some of his divine afflatus into our souls. The priest- 
ess of the Delphic god never spoke without inspiration, and 
then did not use the flat speech of daily life. Would that 
none ever spoke in books, until they felt the god working 
m4jieir heart. 

I To be just, we should remember that a very large part 
of all that Ruskin treats concerns some scene of beauty, 
some work of fine art, somee arnest moral exhortation, some 
indignant rebuke to meanness, — wherein passionate delight 
and passionate appeal are^not merely lawful, but are of the 
essence of the lesson. ( Ruskin is almost always in an 
ecstasy of admiration, or in a fervour of sympathy, or in a 
grand burst of prophetic warning.) It is his mission, his 
nature, his happiness so -to be. And it is inevitable that 
such passion and eagerness should be clothed in language 
more remote from the language of conversation than is 
that of Swift or Humey The language of the preacher is 
not, nor ought it to be, the language of the critic, the 



r 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. J 

philosopher, the historian. Ruskin is a preacher : right or 
wrong he has to deliver his message, whether men will stay 
to hear it or not ; and we can no more require him to limit 
his pace to the plain foot -plodding of unimpassioned prose 
than we can ask this of Saint Bernard, or of Bossuet, of 
Jeremy Taylor or Thomas Carlyle. 

Besides all this/Kuskin has shown that, where the 
business in hand is simple instruction, philosophical argu- 
ment, or mechanical exposition, he is master of an English 
style of faultless ease, simplicity, and point. When he 
wants to describe a plain thing, a particular instrument for 
drawing, a habit of Turner's work, the exact form of a boat, 
or a tower, or a shell, no one can surpass him, or equal 
him, in the clearness and precision of his words/ His 
little book on the Elements of Drawing is a masterpiece in 
lucid explanation of simple mechanical rules and practices. 
Prceterita, Fors Clavigera, and the recent notes to reprinted 
works, contain easy bits of narration, of banter, of personal 
humour, that Swift, Defoe, Goldsmith, and Lamb might 
envy. Turn to that much-abused book, Unto this Last — 
the central book of his life, as it is the turning-point of 
his career — it is almost wholly free from every fault of 
excess with which he has been charged. Men may differ 
as to the argument. But no capable critic will doubt that 
as a type of philosophical discussion, its form is as fine 
and as pure as the form of Berkeley or of Hume. 

But when, his whole soul aglow with some scene of 
beauty, transfigured by a profound moral emotion, he 
breaks forth into one of those typical descants of his, our 
judgment may still doubt if the colouring be not over- 
charged and the composition too crowded for perfect art, 
but we are carried away by its beauty, its rhythm, its 
pathos. We know that the sentence is too long, prepos- 
terously, impossibly sustained — 200 words and more — 250, 



8 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

nay 280 words without a single pause — each sentence 
with 40, 50, 60 commas, colons, and semicolons — and yet 
the whole symphony flows on with such just modulation, 
the images melt so naturally into each other, the harmony 
of tone and the ease of words is so complete, that we 
hasten through the passage in a rapture of admiration. 
Milton began, and once or twice completed, such a re- 
sounding voluntary on his glorious organ. But neither 
Milton, nor Browne, nor Jeremy Taylor, was yet quite 
master of the mighty instrument. Ruskin, who comes 
after two centuries of further and continuous progress in 
this art, is master of the subtle instrument of prose. And 
though it be true that too often, in wanton defiance of 
calm judgment,- he will fling to the winds his self-control, 
he has achieved in this rare and perilous art, some amaz- 
ing triumphs of mastery over language, such as the whole 
history of our literature cannot match. 

Lovers of Ruskin (that is all who read good English 
books) can recall, and many of them can repeat, hundreds 
of such passages, and they will grumble at an attempt to 
select any passage at all. But to make my meaning clear, 
I will turn to one or two very famous bits, not at all assert- 
ing that they are the most truly noble passages that Ruskin 
ever wrote, but as specimens of his more lyrical mood. 
He has himself spoken with slight of much of his earlier 
writing — often perhaps with undeserved humility. He 
especially regrets the purpurei panni, as he calls them, of 
The Seven Lamps and cognate pieces. I will not quote 
any of these purpurei panni, though I think that as rhetori- 
cal prose, as apodeictic perorations, English literature has 
nothing to compare with them. But they are rhetorical, 
somewhat artificial, manifest displays of eloquence — and 
we shall all agree that eloquent displays of rhetoric are 
not the best specimens of prose composition. 



RUSK1N AS MASTER OF PROSE. 9 

I take first a well-known piece of an early book {Modern 
Painters, vol. iv. c. i., 1856), the old Tower of Calais 
Church, a piece which has haunted my memory for nearly 
forty years : — 

The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it ; the record of its 
years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay ; its 
stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and over- 
grown with the bitter sea grasses ; its slates and tiles all shaken and 
rent, and yet not falling ; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and 
holes, and ugly fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock ; its 
carelessness of what anyone thinks or feels about it ; putting forth 
no claim, having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace ; yet 
neither asking for pity ; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or 
fondly garrulous of better days; but useful still, going through its own 
daily work, — as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing 
his daily nets : so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in 
blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human 
souls together underneath it ; the sound of its bells for prayer still 
rolling through its rents ; and the grey peak of it seen far across the 
sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and 
hillocked shore, — the lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labour 
and this — for patience and praise. 



This passage I take to be one of the most magnificent 
examples of the ' pathetic fallacy ' in our language. Per- 
haps the 'pathetic fallacy' is second-rate art ; the passage 
is too long — 211 words alas! without one fullstop, and 
more than forty commas and other marks of punctuation 
— it has trop de choses — it has redundancies, tautologies, 
and artifices, if we are strictly severe — but what a 
picture, what pathos, what subtlety of observation, what 
nobility of association — and withal how complete is the 
unity of impression ! How mournful, how stately is the 
cadence, how harmonious and yet peaceful is the phrase- 
ology, and how wonderfully do thought, the antique history, 
the picture, the musical bars of the whole piece combine 



IO RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

in beauty! What fine and just images — 'the large 
neglect/ the 'noble unsightliness/ The tower is 'eaten 
away by the Channel winds,' ' overgrown with bitter sea 
grasses/ It is 'careless/ 'puts forth no claim/ has 'no 
pride/ does not 'ask for pity/ is not 'fondly garrulous/ 
as other ruins are, but still goes through its work, 'like 
some old fisherman/ It stands blanched, meagre, massive, 
but still serviceable, making no complaint about its past 
youth. A wonderful bit of word-painting — (and, perhaps, 
word-painting, at least on a big canvas, is not strictly lawful) 
— but such a picture as few poets and no prose-writer has 
surpassed ! Byron would have painted it in deeper, fiercer 
strokes. Shelley and Wordsworth would have been less 
definite. Coleridge would not have driven home the moral 
so earnestly ; though Tennyson might have embodied it in 
the stanzas of In Memoriam. 

I should like to take this passage as a text to point to a 
quality of Ruskin's prose in which, I believe, he has sur- 
passed all other writers. It is the quality of musical asso- 
nance. There is plenty of alliteration in Ruskin, as there 
is in all fine writers : but the musical harmony of sound in 
Ruskin's happiest efforts is something very different from 
alliteration, and much more subtle. Coarse, obtrusive, 
artificial alliteration, i.e. the recurrence of words with the 
same initial letter, becomes when crudely treated or over- 
done, a gross and irritating form of affectation. But the 
prejudice against alliteration may be carried too far. Allit- 
eration is the natural expression of earnest feeling in every 
form — it is a physiological result of passion and impetu- 
osity : — it becomes a defect when it is repeated too often, 
or in an obtrusive way, or when it becomes artificial, and 
studied. Whilst alliteration is spontaneous, implicit not 
explicit, felt not seen, the natural working of a fine ear, it 
is not only a legitimate expedient both of prose and of 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 



i'i 



verse, but is an indispensable accessory of the higher 
harmonies in either. 

Ruskin uses alliteration much, (it must be admitted, in 
profusion,) but he relies on a far subtler resource of har- 
mony — that is assonance, or as I should prefer to name it, 
consonance. I have never seen this quality treated at all 
systematically, but I am convinced that it is at the basis 
of all fine cadences both in verse and in prose. By conso- 
nance I mean the recurrence of the same, or of cognate, sounds, 
not merely in the first letter of words, but where the stress 
comes, in any part of a word, and that in sounds whether 
vowel or consonant. Grimm's law of interchangeable con- 
sonants applies ; and all the well-known groupings of con- 
sonants may be noted. The liquids connote the sweeter, 
the gutturals the sterner ideas ; the sibilants connect and 
organise the words. Of poets perhaps Milton, Shelley, and 
Tennyson make the fullest use of this resource. We need 
not suppose that it is consciously sought, or in any sense 
studied, or even observed by the poet. But consonance, 
i.e. recurrence of the same or kindred sounds, is very 
visible when we look for it in a beautiful cadence. Take 
Tennyson's — 

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 

That name the under-lying dead, 
Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 

Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 

How much does the music, nay the impressiveness, of 
this stanza depend on consonance ! The great booming 

with which it opens, is repeated in the last word of the 
first, and also of the last line. The cruel word ' graspest ' 
is repeated in part in the harsh word ' stones.' Three 
lines, and five words in all, begin with the soft c th': 

1 Name ' is echoed by ' net,' * under-lying ' by ' dreamless ' ; 
the *r' of 'roots' is heard again in 'wrapt,' the 'b'in 



12 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

'fibres/ in 'about,' and 'bones/ These are not at all 
accidental cases of consonance. 

This musical consonance is quite present in fine prose, 
although many powerful writers seem to have had but 
little ear for its effects. Such men as Swift, Defoe, 
Gibbon, Macaulay, seldom advance beyond alliteration in 
the ordinary sense. But true consonance, or musical cor- 
respondence of note, is very perceptible in the prose of 
Milton, of Sir Thomas Browne, of Burke, of Coleridge, of 
de Quincey. Above all, it is especially marked in our 
English Bible, and in the Collects and grander canticles of 
the Prayer-book ; and is the source of much of their power 
over us. Of all the masters of prose literature, John 
Ruskin has made the finest use of this resource, and with 
the most delicate and mysterious power. And this is no 
doubt due to his mind being saturated from childhood with 
the harmonies of our English Bible, and to his speaking to 
us with religious solemnity and in Biblical tones. 

This piece about the tower of Calais Church is full of 
this beautiful and subtle form of alliteration or collitera- 
tion — ' the large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it ' — 
' the record of its years written so visibly, yet without 
sign of weakness or decay ' — 'the sound of its bells for 
prayer still rolling through its rents.' Here in a single 
line are three liquid double '11' ; there are six's. ' ; there 
are five 'r' in seven words — 'sound rolling through rents' 
is finely expressive of a peal of bells. And the passage 
ends with a triple alliteration — the second of the three 
being inverted: 'bel' echoing to 'lab.' — 'the lighthouse 
for life, and the belfry for labour, and this — for patience 
and praise.' 

Turn to another famous passage {Modem Painters, vol. 
iv. cap. 19), a somewhat over-wrought, possibly unjust 
picture, stained as usual with the original sin of Calvinism, 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 1 3 

but a wonderful piece of imaginative description. It is 
the account of the peasant of the Valais, in the grand 
chapter on ' Mountain Gloom ' 

They do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of 
knowledge. They understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, 
hospitality, faith, — these things they know. To glean their meadows 
side by side, so happier; to bear the burden up the breathless moun- 
tain flank unmurmuringly ; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel 
of milk ; to see at the foot of their low death-beds a pale figure upon a 
cross, dying, also patiently ; — in this they are different from the cattle 
and from the stones ; but, in all this, unrewarded, so far as concerns 
the present life. For them, there is neither advance nor exultation. 
Black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset ; 
and life ebbs away. No books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest, 
— except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the church 
wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air ; a pattering of 
a few prayers, not understood, by the altar-rails of the dimly gilded 
chapel, — and so, back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them 
still unbroken — that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild 
torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened even in their religion, 
except by the vague promise of some better things unknown, mingled 
with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror — a smoke, 
as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense ; and amidst the 
images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the 
very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for others with gouts of 
blood. 

The piece is over-wrought as well as unjust, with some- 
what false emphasis, but how splendid in colour and 
majestic in language! ' To bear the burden up the 
breathless mountain flank unmurmuringly ' — is fine in 
spite of its obvious scansion and its profuse alliteration. 
1 At their low death-beds a pale figure upon a cross, dying, 
also patiently' — will not scan, but it is charged with 
solemnity by soft '1/ 'd,' and 'p,' repeated. How beauti- 
fully imitative is the line, ' as tJie bell tolls thin and far in 
the mountain air' — a, e, i, o, u, — u, o, i, e, a — with ten 



14 RUSKIX AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

monosyllables and one dissyllable ! ' The cross dashed 
more deeply with gouts of blood! No one who has ever 
read that passage can pass along the Catholic valleys of 
the Swiss Alps without having it in his mind. Over- 
charged, and somewhat consciously and designedly picto- 
rial as it is, it is a truly wonderful example of mastery 
over language and sympathetic insight. 

We may turn now to a passage or two, in which perhaps 
Ruskin is quite at his best. He has written few things 
finer, and indeed more exactly truthful, than his picture of 
the Campagna of Rome. This is in the Preface to the 
second edition of Modem Painters, 1843. 

Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary 
extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader 
imagine himself for the moment withdrawn from the sounds and 
motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and 
wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread 
he never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like 
the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves 
and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion 
shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sun- 
light. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead 
beneath were struggling in their sleep. Scattered blocks of black 
stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon 
another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous 
haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of 
massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on de- 
filed altars ; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a 
solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds 
stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From 
the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, 
melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral 
mourners, passing from a nation's grave. 

Here is a piece of pure description without passion or 
moralising; the passage is broken, as we find in all good 
modern prose, into sentences of forty or fifty words. It is 



RUSK1N AS MASTER OF PROSE. 1 5 

absolutely clear, literally true, an imaginative picture of 
one of the most impressive scenes in the world. All who 
know it, remember 'the white, hollow, carious earth,' like 
bone dust, 'the long knotted grass,' the 'banks of ruin ' and 
'hillocks of mouldering earth,' the 'dull purple poisonous 
haze,' 'the shattered acqueducts,' like shadowy mourners 
at a nation's grave. The whole piece may be set beside 
Shelley's poem from the ' Euganean Hills,' and it produces 
a kindred impression. In Ruskin's prose, perhaps for the 
first time in literature, there are met the eye of the land- 
scape painter and the voice of the lyric poet — and both 
are blended in perfection. It seems to me idle to debate, 
whether or not it is legitimate to describe in prose a mag- 
nificent scene, whether it be lawful to set down in prose 
the ideas which this scene kindles in an imaginative soul, 
whether it be permitted to such an artist to resort to any 
resource of grace or power which the English language 
can present. 

This magnificent piece of word-painting is hardly sur- 
passed by anything in our literature. It cannot be said 
to carry alliteration to the point of affectation. But the 
reader may easily perceive by analysis how greatly its 
musical effect depends on profusion of subtle consonance. 
The ' liquids ' give grace : the broad 6 and a, and their 
diphthong sounds, give solemnity : the gutturals and 
double consonants give strength. ' A dull purple poison- 
ous haze stretches level along the desert ' — 'on whose 
rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars.' 
Here in 13 words are — 5 ' r.,' 4 t., 4 d., 3 1., — ' Dark clouds 
stand steadfastly ' — 'the promontories of the Apennines.' 
The last clause is a favourite cadence of Ruskin's : its 
beautiful melody depends on a very subtle and complex 
scheme of consonance. 'From the plain to the mountains, 
the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the 



l6 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral 
mourners, passing from a nation's grave/ It is impossible 
to suppose that the harmonies of this ' coda p are wholly 
accidental. They are the effect of a wonderful ear for 
tonality in speech, certainly unconscious, arising from 
passionate feeling more than from reflection. And Mr. 
Ruskin himself would no doubt be the first to deny that 
such a thought had ever crossed his mind ; — perhaps he 
would himself denounce with characteristic vehemence 
any such vivisection applied to his living and palpitating 
words. 

I turn now to a little book of his written in the middle 
of his life, at the height of his power, just before he 
entered on his second career of social philosopher and 
new evangelist. The Harbours of England was published 
nearly forty years ago in 1856 (aetat : 37), and it has now 
been happily reprinted in a cheap and smaller form, 1895. 
It is, I believe, as an education in art, as true, and as mas- 
terly as anything Ruskin ever wrote. But I wish now to 
treat it only from the point of view of English literature. 
And I make bold to say that no book in our language 
shows more varied resources over prose-writing, or an 
English more pure, more vigorous, more enchanting. It 
contains hardly any of those tirades with which the 
preacher loves to drench his hearers — torrents from the 
fountains of his ecstasy, or his indignation. The book is 
full of enthusiasm and of poetry : but it also contains a 
body of critical and expository matter simple, lucid, grace- 
ful, incisive as anything ever set down by the hand of 
John Ruskin — or indeed of any other master of our 
English prose. 

Everyone remembers the striking sentence with which 
it opens — a sentence, it may be, exaggerated in meaning, 
but how melodious, how impressive — ' Of all things, liv- 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 1 7 

ing or lifeless, [ note the 5 1., the 4 i. in the first six words] 
upon this strange earth, there is but one which, having 
reached the mid-term of appointed human endurance on 
it, I still regard with unmitigated amazement/ This 
object is the bow of a Boat, — 'the blunt head of a com- 
mon, bluff, undecked sea-boat lying aside in its furrow of 
beach sand. . . .' 

The sum of Navigation is in that. You may magnify it or decorate 
it as you will : you will not add to the wonder of it. Lengthen it into 
hatchet-like edge of iron, — strengthen it with complex tracery of ribs 
of oak, — carve it and gild it till a column of light moves beneath it on 
the sea, — you have made no more of it than it was at first. That rude 
simplicity of bent plank, that [ ? should be ' which '] can breast its way 
through the death that is in the deep sea, has in it the soul of shipping. 
Beyond this, we may have more work, more men, more money ; we 
cannot have more miracle. 

The whole passage is loaded with imagery, with fancy, 
but hardly with conceits ; it is wonderfully ingenious, im- 
pressive, suggestive, so that a boat is never quite the same 
thing to anyone who has read this passage in early life. 
The ever-changing curves of the boat recall ' the image of 
a sea-shell.' ' Every plank is a Fate, and has men's lives 
wreathed in the knots of it.' This bow of the boat is 'the 
gift of another world.' Without it, we should be ' chained 
to our rocks.' The very nails that fasten the planks are 
'the rivets of the fellowship of the world.' 'Their iron 
does more than draw lightning out of heaven, it leads 
love round the earth.' It is possible to call this fantastic, 
over-wrought, lyrical : it is not possible to dispute its 
beauty, charm, and enthusiasm. It seems to me to carry 
imaginative prose exactly to that limit which to pass 
would cease to be fitting in prose ; to carry fancy to the 
very verge of that which, if less sincere, less true, less 
pathetic — would justly be regarded as Euphuistic conceit. 



1 8 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

And so this splendid hymn to the sea-boat rolls on to 
that piece which I take to be as fine and as true as any- 
thing ever said about the sea, even by our sea poets, 
Byron or Shelley : — 

Then also, it is wonderful on account of the greatness of the enemy 
that it does battle with. To lift dead weight; to overcome length of 
languid space ; to multiply or systematise a given force ; this we may 
see done by the bar, or beam, or wheel, without wonder. But to war 
with that living fury of waters, to bare its breast, moment after moment, 
against the unwearied enmity of ocean, — the subtle, fitful, implacable 
smiting of the black waves, provoking each other on, endlessly, all the 
infinite march of the Atlantic rolling on behind them to their help, and 
still to strike them back into a wreath of smoke and futile foam, and 
win its way against them, and keep its charge of life from them ; — does 
any other soulless thing do as much as this ? 

This noble paragraph has truth, originality, music, maj- 
esty, with that imitative power of sound which is usually 
thought to be possible only in poetry, and is very rarely 
successful even in poetry. Homer has often caught echoes 
of the sea in his majestic hexameters ; Byron and Shelley 
occasionally recall it ; as does Tennyson in its milder 
moods and calm rest. But I know no other English prose 
but this which, literally and nobly describing the look of a 
wild sea, suggests in the very rhythm of its cadence, and in 
the music of its roar, the tumultuous surging of the surf 
— i To war with that living fury of waters ' — ' the subtle, 
fitful, implacable smiting of the black waves/ — ' still to 
strike them back into a wreath of smoke and futile foam, 
and win its way against them J — Here we seem not only 
to see before our eyes, but to hear with our ears, the crash 
of a stout boat plunging through a choppy sea off our 
southern coasts. 

I would take this paragraph as the high-water mark of 
Ruskin's prose method. But there are scores and hundreds 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 19 

of passages in his books of equal power and perfection. 
This book on The Harbours of England is full of them. 
O si sic 07nnia ! Alas ! a few pages further on, even in of 
this admirable book which is so free from them, comes one 
those ungovernable, over-laden, hypertrophied outbursts of 
his, which so much deform his earlier books. It is a splen- 
did piece of conception ; each phrase, each sentence is 
beautiful ; the images are appropriate and cognate ; they 
flow naturally out of each other ; and the whole has a 
most harmonious glow. But alas ! as English prose, it is 
impossible. It has 255 words without a pause, and 26 
intermediate signs of punctuation. No human breath 
could utter such a sentence : even the eye is bewildered ; 
and, at last, the most docile and attentive reader sinks 
back, stunned and puzzled by such torrent of phrases and 
such a wilderness of thoughts. 1 

He is speaking of the fisher-boat as the most venerable 
kind of ship. He stands musing on the shingle between 
the black sides of two stranded fishing-boats. He watches 
' the clear heavy water-edge of ocean rising and failing 
close to their bows/ And then he turns to the boats. 

And the dark flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in their 
shining quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed, with 
square patches of plank nailed over their rents ; just rough enough to 
let the little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist themselves up to 
the gunwales, and drop back again along some stray rope ; just round 
enough to remind us, in their broad and gradual curves, of the sweep 
of the green surges they know so well, and of the hours when those 
old sides of seared timber, all ashine with the sea, plunge and dip into the 
deep green purity of the mounded waves more joyfully than a deer lies 

In the second volume of Modern Painters, p. 132, may be found a mam- 
moth sentence, I suppose the most gigantic sentence in English prose. It 
has 619 words without a full stop, and 80 intermediate signs of punctuation, 
together with four clauses in brackets. It has been reprinted in the revised 
two volumes, edition of 1883, where it fills four whole pages, i. 347-351. 



2C RUSKIX AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

down among the grass of Spring, the soft white cloud of foam open- 
ing momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying high into the breeze 
ea-gulls toss and shriek. — the joy and beauty of it. all 
the while, so mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and the 
human effort and sorrow going on perpetually from age to age, w.v 
rolling for ever, and winds moaning for ever, and faithful hearts trust- 
ing and sickening for ever, and brave lives dashed away about the rat- 
tling beach like weeds for ever : and still at the helm of every lonelv 
boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn. His hand, who spread 
the Usher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the 
fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 

It is a grand passage, ruined. I think, by excess of eager- 
ness, and sympathetic passion. Neither Shelley nor Ke; 
ever flung his soul more keenly into an inert object and 
made it live to us, or rather, lived in it, felt its heart beat in 
his and made his own its sorrows, its battles, its pride. So 
Tennyson gazing on the Yew which covers the loved 
grave cries out — 

I seem to fail from out my blood 
And grow incorporate into thee. 

S : the poet sees the ship that brings his lost Arthur 
home, hears the noise about the keel, and the bell struck 
in the night. Thus Ruskin, watching the fisherman's 
boat upon the beach, sees in his mind's eye, the past and 
the future of the boat, the swell of the green billows, and 
the roar of the ocean, and still at the helm, unseen but of 
him, an Almighty Hand guiding it in life and in death. 

Had this noble vision been rehearsed with less passion, 
and in sober intervals of breathing, we could have borne it. 
The first twelve or fourteen lines, ending with ' the deep 
en purity of the mounded waves," form a full picture. 
But, like a runaway horse, our poet plunges on where no 
human lungs and no ordinary brain can keep up the giddy 
pace ; and for seven or eight lines more we are pelted 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 21 

with new images till we feel like landsmen caught in a 
sudden squall. And then how grand are the last ten lines 
— ' the human effort and sorrow going on perpetually from 
age to age' — ! down to that daring antithesis of the 
fishermen of Tyre and the fisherman of St. Peter's ! I can- 
not call it a conceit : but it would have been a conceit in 
the hands of anyone less sincere, less passionate, not so 
perfectly saturated with Biblical imagery and language. 

I have dwelt upon this passage as a typical example of 
Ruskin's magnificent power over the literary instrument, 
of his intense sympathy, of his vivid imagination, and alas ! 
also of his ungovernable flux of ideas and of words. It is 
by reason of this wilful megalomania and plethoric habit, 
that we must hesitate to pronounce him the greatest master 
of English prose in our whole literature : but it is such mas- 
tery over language, such power to triumph over almost 
impossible conditions and difficulties, that compel us to 
regard him as one who could have become the noblest 
master of prose ever recorded, if he would only have set 
himself to curb his Pegasus from the first, and system- 
atically to think of his reader's capacity for taking in, as 
well as of his own capacity for pouring forth, a torrent of 
glowing thoughts. 

As a matter of fact, John Ruskin himself undertook to 
curb his Pegasus, and, like Turner or Beethoven, distinctly 
formed and practised 'a second manner.' That second 
manner coincides with the great change in his career, when 
he passed from critic of art to be social reformer and moral 
philosopher. The change was of course not absolute ; 
but whereas, in the earlier half of his life he had been a 
writer about Beauty and Art, who wove into his teaching 
lessons on social, moral, and religious problems, so he 
became, in the later part of his life a worker about Society 
and Ethics, who filled his practical teaching with judg- 



22 KUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 

ments about the beautiful in Nature and in Art. That 
second career dates from about the year i860, when he 
began to write Unto this Last, which was finally published 
in 1862. 

I myself judge that book to be not only the most origi- 
nal and creative work of John Ruskin, but the most original 
and creative work in pure literature since Sartor Resar- 
tus. But I am now concerning myself with form : and, as 
a matter of form, I would point to it as a work containing 
almost all that is noble in Ruskin's written prose, with 
hardly any, or very few, of his excesses and mannerisms. 
It is true, that, p. 147-8, we have a single sentence of 242 
words and 52 intermediate stops before we come to the 
pause. But this is occasional ; and the book as a whole is 
a masterpiece of pure, incisive, imaginative, lucid English. 
If one had to plead the cause of Ruskin before the Supreme 
Court in the Republic of Letters, one would rely on that 
book as a type of clearness, wit, eloquence, versatility, 
passion. 

From the publication of Unto this Last, in 1862, John 
Ruskin distinctly adopted his later manner. Two volumes 
of selections from Ruskin's works were published in 1893 
by George Allen, the compilation of some anonymous 
editor. They are of nearly equal size and of periods of 
equal length. The first series consists of extracts between 
1843 an d i860 from Modern Painters, Seven Lamps, 
Stones of Venice, and minor lectures, articles, and letters 
anterior to i860. The second series, 1 860-1 888, contains 
selections from Unto this Last, Fors, Prceterita, and the 
lectures and treatises subsequent to i860. Now, it will be 
seen that in the second series the style is more measured, 
more mature, more practical, more simple. It is rare to 
find the pnrpurei panni which abound in the first series, or 
the sentences of 200 words, or the ostentatious piling up 



RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 23 

of luscious imagery, and tumultuous fugues in oral sym- 
phony. The 'first state' of a plate by Ruskin has far 
richer effects and more vivid light and shade than any 
example of his 'second state.' 

Alas! the change came too late — too late in his life, 
too late in his career. When Unto this Last was finally 
published, John Ruskin was forty-three : he had already 
written the most elaborate and systematic of all his books 
— those on which his world-wide fame still rests. He had 
long past il mezzo del cammin di nostra vita — and even 
the middle of his own long life : his energy, his health, his 
hopes were not what they had been in his glorious youth 
and early manhood : his mission became consciously to 
raise men's moral standard in life, not to raise their sense 
of the beautiful in Art. The old mariner still held us 
with his glistening eye, and forced us to listen to his 
wondrous tale, but he spoke like a man whose voice 
shook with the memory of all that he had seen and known, 
over whom the deep waters had passed. I am one of 
those who know that John Ruskin has told us in his 
second life things more true and more important even 
than he told us in his first life. But yet I cannot bring 
myself to hold that, as magician of words, his later teaching 
has the mystery and the glory which hung round the 
honeyed lips of the ' Oxford Graduate.' 

If then, John Ruskin be not in actual achievement the 
greatest master who ever wrote in English prose, it is 
only because he refused to chasten his passion and his 
imagination until the prime of life was past. A graceful 
poet and a great moralist said : — 

Prune thou thy words ; the thoughts control 

That o'er thee swell and throng: — 
They will condense within thy soul, 

And change to purpose strong. 






24 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE. 



#- 



A 



This lesson Ruskin never learned until he was growing 
grey, and even now he only observes it so long as the 
spirit moves him, or rather does not move him too keenly. 
He has rarely suffered his thoughts to condense within 
his soul. Far from controlling them, he has spurred and 
lashed them into fury, so that they swell and throng over 
him and his readers, too often changing into satiety and 
impotence. Every other faculty of a great master of 
speech, except reserve, husbanding of resources, and 
patience, he possesses in measure most abundant — 
lucidity, purity, brilliance, elasticity, wit, fire, passion, 
imagination, majesty, with a mastery over all the melody 
of cadence that has no rival in the whole range of English 
literature. ^ 



RUSKIN AS MASTER 
OF PROSE 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON 



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